


Days Past

by staticbees



Category: Oxenfree
Genre: Gen, based off of the Sacrifice Clarissa ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 14:32:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14771471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staticbees/pseuds/staticbees
Summary: Nona remembers Clarissa, as she was."When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not. But soon I shall be so I cannot remember any... but the things that never happened."





	Days Past

Nona wasn't sure why she had gone to the party in the first place. It wasn't like she was that close with anyone in her class, and drinking alcohol with practical strangers didn't exactly appeal to her, but she had headed out there anyway, with a cooler full of beer borrowed from her cousin and the sinking realization that she'd _definitely_ regret going by herself.

 

She was friendly with Ren and Alex, but she had been disappointed that they were the only ones to show up, along with Alex’s new step-brother, Jonas. She wasn’t particularly close to either, and despite getting to know them better on the island, she still felt… distant, in a way she couldn’t quite place.  

 

She had decided to go to a ballet academy, after they got back to the mainland. It had always been something she enjoyed doing, and during high school she had spent most of the school year skipping classes to practice. She was nimble and balanced on her feet, with a sort of general gracefulness about her that her old friends from elementary school had always envied.

 

It was exactly like she’d hoped, at first. The other students had been welcoming and friendly when she first arrived, and her instructor was optimistic about her skills, helping her through the steps she couldn’t quite master. There was a nagging sense, somewhere in the back of her mind, that something was _wrong_ , that there was something missing, but she ignored it. It was nice to be away from her hometown, away from the memories of what had happened there. She fell into a routine, after a while.

 

And then, after almost a month, the nightmares started coming back. Dreams of ghosts and islands. Possessed students, muttering indistinctly, hands limp by their sides, eyes glowing red. She would jolt awake _–_ heart pounding, static buzzing in her ears _–_ after a particularly bad nightmare, unable to get back to sleep the rest of the night. She began to fall asleep in the middle of classes, missing instructions and assignments. Her grades plummeted. She became quiet and withdrawn, dark bags carved under her eyes like someone had taken a chisel to stone skin. In the middle of the night, she'd wake up screaming, gasping for breath, with trembling hands and wide eyes.

 

After a few weeks, she had to quit the academy and go back to Camena. Her parents didn't seem to mind much. They didn't mind anything she did, really, so long as she wasn't about to kill herself.

 

By the time she’d gotten back, Ren had left to go to a university in California. Jonas and Alex were staying in town for college, but Nona didn’t see them that often. She wasn't very good friends with Jonas, and she figured Alex was probably swamped with work, so she kept to herself, tried to deal with the nightmares on her own.

 

She took a part-time job at a store in town, going to therapy on the weekends, and taking meds to help with the insomnia. She didn’t tell her therapist about the ghosts, of course, made up some story about getting lost on Edward’s Island, separated from her friends.

 

It helped to explain away why she flinched when someone mentioned the Kanaloa, why she hated horror movies, why she had panic attacks whenever she heard static. Why she was suddenly deeply afraid of the dark, of being alone, of the ocean, of the _island_. Why her nightmares had gotten so bad that she'd had to leave the school she'd wanted to go to for years, and move back to her small Oregon hometown to rent a cheap apartment right at the edge of town, with plain chipped plaster walls and flickering lights. The story wasn’t as traumatic as the actual event, of course, but her therapist took it in stride, and the sessions helped, even though they were far from perfect.

 

It was a cool fall night, and Nona shivered, pulling her coat tighter around her. She’d been having trouble sleeping ever since their disastrous trip to Edward’s Island, and even though she was still terrified of the dark, she figured going for a walk was a better idea than staring up at her ceiling all night. Besides, there were streetlamps, and storefronts, and cars, and it was a dim, evening kind of dark, almost comforting.

 

Nona stopped walking, and glanced at Camena Park, the main attraction of the town, besides, of course, the island. The beaten down hiking trail into the Camena’s thick woods began in the park and wound through the forest, snaking around still ponds and dusty summer cabins.

 

Ancient oak trees stood around the outer edges of the park, spindly, crooked tree branches looking like outstretched hands. The air was crisp, and smelled like cigarette smoke and thunderstorms, despite it not having rained for several days. Autumn leaves littered the ground, crackling underfoot. Moonlight had painted the park a dusky, faded grey, the shapes of the trees and park benches just barely visible in the darkness, and Nona stared at it for a moment, a strange sense of familiarity washing over her.

 

_You used to hang out here with Clarissa, remember?_

 

Nona stopped in her tracks, puzzled. She had never known a Clarissa, had never heard that name until _–_

 

_“Where’s Clarissa?” Alex had asked. They were on the boat, heading back to the mainland, and Nona had turned towards her, confused._

 

_“Who?” Jonas had asked, raising an eyebrow._

 

 _Alex had paled. “Nevermind,” she had amended hastily, and then they had gotten back to talking about prom,_ and Nona had completely forgotten all about that, had dismissed it as a former crewmember of the Kanaloa, maybe, or just general confusion from all that they had gone through on the island. She knew that when she first woke up, her mind had been foggy and scrambled, and it had taken her more than a few minutes to get her bearings.

 

She frowned, wracking her brain to recall anything more, but there was nothing else, just the name, and the vague sense of something missing, something _important_ . So she headed home, Alex’s words from more a year ago echoing in her mind. _Where’s Clarissa?_

 

When she got home, instead of wasting her time trying to sleep, she flopped down onto her bed, and flipped open her laptop, the glowing screen illuminating her face with a dim blue light. She opened her web browser, and searched ‘Clarissa’, along with her own name, first and last. Nothing came up, except some Facebook posts from someone living in Colorado. She tried adding ‘Edward’s Island’, and then her high school, and Jonas, and Ren, and Alex. Nothing, each time.

 

Nona sighed. Maybe she’d just imagined the name, after all. Maybe there hadn’t ever been a Clarissa to begin with. She closed her computer, pulled her blanket up to her chest, and tried not to think about it.

 

Over the next few days, though, Nona began to remember more. At first, it was just flashes, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it memories of a girl who never existed. She didn’t mention it to anyone, waved it off as lack of sleep, and tried to focus on the _now_ , on the present, to ground herself in her own reality.

 

As time went on, however, it grew harder to distinguish her reality from Clarissa’s. She began to mix up what had happened and what hadn’t, memories bleeding together like watercolors on a wet canvas.

 

At first, she guessed it might be alternate dimensions leaking through, side effects from the time loops on Edward’s Island finally catching up to her. Soon, though, she began to suspect that it might be something more. The memories seemed so palpable, like they had just happened yesterday, like Nona _–_ not just a version of herself from some parallel universe, but her, actually _her_ _–_ had _been_ there.

 

Clarissa showing up to Nona’s birthday with a huge cake and watching movies on the couch until 4AM, skipping school to hang out in the park, jumping off the pier into the freezing water below, biting words and papercut sarcasm, suspensions spent sneaking out in the middle of the night with a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, and two cans of soda, Clarissa’s eyes glinting in the moonlight, her knife slash grin and glossy red lipstick, cigarette perched between her slender fingers, smoke curling around her face, the party, on the island, when they brought beer and beach towels and _–_

 

and then, just like that, Clarissa was gone. She wasn’t sure why, or how, but Clarissa had never made it off Edward’s Island. They had all just _left her there_ , had forgotten that she ever she existed in the first place.

 

And that had been the way it stayed, she assumed, until about a month ago. Until she started to remember.

 

It was late November now. She’d been out of school for a while, and Nona wasn’t sure if she could make it through a genuine human conversation without breaking down into stuttered excuses, but she had planned to get a coffee with Alex after her classes someday, catch up on what they’d missed, and it had already been rescheduled five times in the past month.

 

Nona knew she’d feel guilty all week if she delayed it again, so she sucked it up and went, hands tucked in woolen gloves and a beanie pulled down over her ears.

 

The cafe they were meeting at was right near her apartment, a warm, cozy place with cheap coffee and pastries. Nona saw Alex sitting at a table when she walked in, bell jingling, and she joined her. The younger girl was wearing her battered red jacket, still a bit too big but fitting better than it had a year ago, and she had let her hair fade back to brown.

 

The two of them played catch up for a while, bouncing from school to work to opinions on new movies. As the conversation went on, Nona gradually grew more relaxed, a sharp contrast to how twitchy and anxious she had been when she sat down. She should’ve known it would only be a matter of time before she slipped up.

 

They’d drifted from talking about the Twilight Zone to Alex’s mom’s odd and extensive knowledge of old, cheesy horror flicks from the 50s and 60s. Alex, eyes dancing, went into great detail how Jonas absolutely _despised_ them, and Nona stifled laughter.

 

“Yeah, Clarissa hated _–_ ” she stopped short, biting her lip. “I mean, I knew someone who hated those.”

 

Alex stared at her. “You _–_ wait.” She stops. “You remember Clarissa?”

 

“Yeah.” Nona tapped her fingers lightly on the table, a nervous habit she picked up a few years ago. “I started to remember her about a month ago. I thought _–_ you’re the only one who’s always remembered the, uh, loops, right?”

 

Alex suddenly looked utterly exhausted. “Yeah.”

 

She hesitated. “Do Ren and Jonas…?”

 

“No.” Alex said quietly. “Only us.”

 

Nona hesitated. “I want to go back. To save her.”

 

Alex opened her mouth to protest, snapped it closed. “I’m coming with you,” she said firmly. It’s not a question.

 

“Okay,” Nona said.


End file.
